The present invention relates to apparatus for applying information to various sheet- or plate-like materials, especially for applying letters, numerals and/or other types of indicia to photographic materials such as diapositives, photographic prints and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to improvements in apparatus for applying information to sheet- or plate-like materials with an electronically operated applicator.
It is presently customary to identify various types of discrete photographic materials by hand, e.g., to inscribe information on the frames of diapositives or on the rear sides of photographic prints. It is also known to resort to labels on which the information is inscribed by hand and which are thereupon bonded to prints or diapositives. It is further known to apply information to such labels with a typewriter or a stamp.
In accordance with another earlier proposal, information is applied to the frames of diapositives by a specially designed typewriter. A drawback of such proposal is that the typewriter is big, unwieldy and not suitable for the application of information to other types of materials, i.e., the versatility of the typewriter is minimal so that it is too expensive for an amateur photographer or for a small shop dealing in photographic materials. Still further, the just discussed typewriter cannot accept all types of photographic material, e.g., large prints, because they cannot be inserted thereinto in proper position for reception of information in response to depression of selected keys.
In accordance with still another prior proposal, photographic material is supposed to receive information in a printer having sets of letters which can apply selected types of information in the form of words, groups of words, groups of numerals and the like. In other words, such printer constitutes a version of a stamp which can be used to apply the same information to each of a short or long series of photographic materials. A drawback of the printer is that its versatility is negligible because it takes too much time to change from one type of imprint to another e.g., to compose a different sentence for application to a given number of materials.